*can be. You can do more traditional memory patterns too in zig. There is also an allocator in stdlib that directly wraps C's malloc. Likewise, if you're writing a plugin for another software or FFI for a VM language, you can wrap their allocators (if they provide them).
This is the key part.
Zig memory allocation is something like bookmark, allocate and then free everything after bookmark when done. Someone pushed it to limit.